Read Online 1982 Janine by Alasdair Gray - Free Book Online

widely agreed that the sight of an adult male penis in a public place has a terrifying and corrupting effect upon women and children. If this is true then men also are a very unlucky sex. No wonder some of us feel our penis is not an original part of us but an unwelcome addition. Not that I want to see legalised nude sunbathing in the public parks. I am a gentleman of the old school. I nourish my fifth limb in total privacy. It is seven or eight years since a woman shared it.
    40 PENIS TERROR  
    â€œWhat is your earliest memory of sexual intercourse with your mother?”
    Honestly, Sontag, I cannot remember. My mother was not a person but the climate I grew up in. All I remember about sex with her is, sitting on the opposite side of a room which felt like a prison (there was sunlight outside, down by the river the colliers’ sons were guddling trout) a prison that gradually became comfortable, expansive and palatial as I imagined the games I would play with Jane Russell when we were married. Momma picks up the rubber tube and says, “With this thing I can have any girl I like squealing andsquirming like a streetwalker being worked over by the toughest cop on the beat. But don’t worry. If you do exactly what I say I’ll be as gentle as I can. Nod your head if you want it the easy way.”
    41 BAD BOLD MOMMA
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    Superb is now so passive that she has nearly vanished as a character. Her reserves of bitchcourage, bitch stubbornness are stupefied by the novelty of her situation. I am tempted to have her suddenly attack Momma and wrestle for the key in the skirtpocket. Momma would win, of course, and summon to assist her a slightly younger woman not quite as fat as herself and wearing dungarees with the legs cut off round the tops of her thighs. But if I introduce a new woman every time I encounter a difficulty I’ll soon have a gymnasium full of more women than I know how to handle. The house of happiness is entered through the gateway of self-restraint. Who said that? Plato? Mad Hislop? Chairman Mao? Maybe I thought of it myself. So Superb glares bitterly but nods her head meaning, yes she will do exactly what she is told.
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    Big Momma still sits wearing this skirt which hides nothing but has a useful pocket and protects her bum from the coldness of the desktop. She lights a cigarette, crosses one leg carefully over the other and says softly, “Step out of those sandals. Peel down those tight jeans and anything else you’ve got on underneath. Be as slow as you like.”
    Superb is not interested in giving a slow striptease. She kicks the sandals and removes anklerings, jeans, knickers as briskly and casually as she can, folding them carefully along with the crumpled blouse into a neat pile on the floor. Then she slips the anklets on again, because Momma wants that, and faces the desk with a bored expression, legs together and one knee slightly bent, breasts compressed by folded arms. What is her body like apart from strong, large-breasted, average height? She could be like the editor who had a long straight graceful upper body swelling downward into hips which swelled out into the thighs of rather short plump legs. She was like a plumper than usual Botticelli Venus above the waist and a smaller than usual Rubens Venus beneath, a strange body but lovely when naked. She looked ordinary in clothes because she was ashamed of herlegs and disguised them under wide skirts and dresses with higher waists than her own. She deliberately made herself ordinary, for if a man looked at her in the street she grew uneasy, thinking he was laughing at her short legs. Once, when we were getting drunk together, I explained she ought to dress for her body and not against it. She said,
    42 TWO TIMID DRESSERS  
    â€œYou want me to dress like a tart.”
    I said, “Only idiots think attractively dressed women are tarts. You mix with fairly intelligent people, they would be pleased if you